5th Bar Sagi Awards Event

The awards event for the 5th Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize – held, as usual, via Zoom – took place on April 14th 2024, immediately before the awards event for the 2023 Reuben Rose competition.

In addition to the winners and their families, many of our adult members and their guests attended the event to support these talented young poets, and since the event was held via Zoom they came from as far away as Alaska, California and other U.S. states, Canada and the UK, as well as from all over Israel. In all over 50 people attended the joint Bar Sagi + Reuben Rose awards event.

Professor Anthony Joseph, Bar’s grandfather and the sponsor of this prize, was regretfully not able to attend at the last minute; Judy Koren, Voices Israel’s president, read what he had intended to say from notes he sent her. And as is becoming a tradition, we showed a video of one of Bar’s poem from the “Echoes of Bar” series: “Hope” set to music by Lior Soltz and sung by Tzlil Rubinstein, with a beautiful animation (viewable on YouTube via this link).

The competition administrator, Michele Bustin, then added a few comments about the competition and thanked all involved in its organization and publicity. While there were fewer entries this year than last (not surprising considering that the whole competition took place during a time of war), we reached a wider selection of schools than before.

This year, like last year, we had four winning poems, since two tied for 3rd prize and the judges just could not decide between them! — and two Honorable Mentions. The quality of all of them was very high, and several of our members commented on this to us after the event.

The highlight of the evening was of course hearing the winners read their poems. Talia Rabah, aged 16, from Kisra S’mea in Upper Galilee, read “Harmony of Silence” which won first prize; Hadar Yadin, aged 15, from Gedera, read “Even someone you didn’t know still thinks about you,” which won second prize; Almog Kobi from Tirat HaCarmel, aged 16, read “Unforsaken Love” and Lotem Shperling, aged 15, from Kibbutz Megiddo, read “A Winter Friday” which tied with Almog’s poem for 3rd place. We also greatly enjoyed hearing the two poems which won an Honorable Mention: “When the love dies it takes you with it” by Neomi Bechor, aged 15, from Gedera and “My Safe Place” by Naya Abu Hmeed, aged 16, also from Kisra S’mea. All the poems may be read and downloaded here (PDF file).

We recorded the event via Zoom and the video is on the Voices Israel YouTube channel; all our members and everyone registered for the event received a link. Feel free to share it with whoever you like!